Thursday, June 27, 2013
C0.17 (Oudemanhuispoort)
Recent scholarship in social policy and political science has deemed the emergence of labour market outsiders and new social risk groups significant for post-industrial economies and societies. This paper turns to explore the opportunities that this challenging development presents for political parties. Building on recent literature on party competition, this paper addresses the dimensionality of new social risk group political preferences. First, it questions which issue dimensions these new social risk groups consider at the ballot box. Second, it relates these to the strategies that different political parties adopt when soliciting support from these social groups. Finally, it examines how political preferences vary not only between labour market insiders and outsiders, but also across welfare state worlds. The paper highlights the fundamental tension--faced by both parties and voters--between political contestation over economic versus socio-cultural issues (such as immigration, identity, and law-and-order considerations). While the paper points to an association between party strategies and new social risk group preferences, it underlines important variations in risk profiles and group preferences across welfare state typologies. We conduct cross-sectional analyses using the 2009 European Election Study, the 2006 European Social Survey, and the 2006 International Social Survey Programme.
